A Slave to the Servants Ch. 11

When the first one was struck down, I saw his Brothers cry out. Now I knew who belonged to which family. It was a mercy kill to end the lives of his Brothers quickly.

The second family ran when the first family fell. We would catch them before they hid their trail. Kein was an excellent tracker, they would not escape in the forest as they planned to do.

We walked into the woods with confidence, Kein and Evan leading. The forest changed as I watched. The trees shifted and became rock walls. Instead of a forest we were tracking in the mountains.

I felt dread. I hated the mountains. Women could hide in the craggy pits and drop upon us without warning. I heard the beating of wings, but my vision was narrowed and I couldn't tell where it was coming from.

Christof screamed and I tried to find him. My feet wouldn't move fast enough, I seemed to be running in thick mud. No one was with me now, I was alone in the mountains, divided from my Brothers.

I woke up a little and pushed at the walls of the box I was in. The panic of being trapped in here started to mount, spurred on by my strange nightmare. To calm myself I thought of Master Damien and his Brothers. I concentrated hard on them and felt myself almost leave the box.

I was in the mountains again, running with all my might. The women were coming, their wings were everywhere; I just could not see them. If I could just find my Brothers, I would feel better, for now I was all alone.

Enough of this, I thought to myself as I woke up sweating and nervous again.

I took deep controlled breaths. There was no need to fear. I wasn't in the mountains, no one was chasing me. Instead, I thought about the day Master Damien and his Brothers took me to the canal.

We were all there again. The men seemed confused to find themselves on the bobbing wooden platform. I looked up at them and for some reason, I'd left them dressed and with their weapons on. This was a dream, I thought to myself, I'd prefer them naked.

The men's clothing dissolved and they sat down watching me.

"Swim with me, Masters?" I asked the men in my dream. "Show me fun things like you did before."

Master Damien bounded into the water and I followed him in. I loved to be in the ocean.

They took me deeper than I had gone that day. Master Kein showed me the bottom of the canal and the things that lived there. He spoke underwater and told me they could swim much deeper than I could. They had wanted to show me this the day we came, but they knew I wouldn't be able to swim so far down.

I loved the water, the quiet gurgle in my ears as I swam. We stayed under water forever. This was a dream, so I didn't have to surface for breath. We just swam and played in the canal.

The dream seemed so real. I watched with awe as the men zipped through the water. They moved like some strange sort of eel, undulating up and down. It fascinated me, just as it had the first day I saw it.

The men found the worms and ate them underwater. They were so good. I caught and ate the worms with them. Marvelous, wonderful, sticky creatures that bled on my tongue. I couldn't get enough of them.

How had I ever thought the worms were gross?

We continued to swim and my mind drifted to Earth. I thought of the rocky coast I swam on before I was enslaved. The cold water and sea air called me home.

"Ciara, where are we?" Master Damien asked standing naked on the beach.

"Rocky Point Beach," I told him, "I used to come here to play in the water."

The men looked around. They picked up the rocks and watched the sea birds that fluttered in the strong breeze. Master Christof picked up the book bag I always brought and went through it. He found the money I would use to pay my way home.

"Don't lose that," I warned him. "I use it to pay the bus driver to take me home from here."

Instead Christof picked out the sandwich I had made and looked at it. I explained I brought food with me when I came here and he tasted it, as did his Brothers. They also tasted the applesauce and pudding cups I'd brought. They found the flavor not very interesting, but the texture of the applesauce was disgusting to them.

"Come into the water," I ordered laughing. "That's where all the fun is!"

I dove into the churning ocean and went down deep. The men followed and I pointed out the fish in my memories to them. They wanted to go in the caves deeper down, but I couldn't show them that.

"I never went that deep," I told Master Christof underwater, "and if I got stuck in the caves I wouldn't have a way to breath."

We crawled onto shore and I looked down at myself. I was dressed like I always was when I came to the beach. A faded grey t-shirt soaked and stuck to my skin and an old pair of cut off jeans.

"What is this?" Master Damien asked touching the torn denim fabric.

"Jeans," I said luxuriating in the sun, "I used to wear clothes all the time. No one on my world walks around naked."

"We ornament your naked body, becuase you don't need clothes," Master Evan said crouching in front of me. "My Brothers and I protect you, you do not need such thick fabric. We ornament you to show you in our colors. That is how we wish to see you."

Looking down, my outfit was changed. I was in my collar and cuffs. My torso was wrapped with a gauzy piece of blue fabric. This was much better, I agreed.

"Still," I told them, "this outfit would not have been good to wear at the place I lived and worked."

They didn't understand, so in the dream we were there.

It was midday at the motel. The sign that permanently read "Vacancy" flashed along the roadside. The men understood the sign through me.

As we walked through the squalor that had been my life, I felt the men judging it. Albert, the motel's most senior resident drunk, was sitting outside his door in a lawn chair asleep and drooling. The place was dingy and they sensed my discomfort at walking here with no clothes on to shield me.

In my memories they saw the pointless violence I had witnessed in this place. They saw the bloody beer bottles I had cleaned up. As we passed room thirty two we all remembered the body of the overdosed heroin addict I had found one morning.

I took them the long way around to my room. There was a short cut through the building down a dark hall, but a woman had been brutally raped there one afternoon. After that happened I never walked that way again. Even in the dream, I feared that dark secluded hall. The men felt my unease, but said nothing.

In my small room at the hotel, I showed them the things I was proud of. The money I had scrimped and saved was hidden in a plastic bag in the toilet tank. Damien asked why I put it there. He understood it was an odd place for something I considered of value.

"People would steal it, if they knew where it was," I told him, counting the bills in my memory with pride. "I locked my door every day, but that wouldn't stop most of the people that would want to come in here and take it."

Damien and his Brothers did not understand. Men on their world were honorable. The few men that would steal were identified and kept far from the villages by the Administrators. They had never had something like a door lock and they found my use of one odd.

"People aren't always honorable," I tried to explain, but the men still didn't understand.

I failed miserably trying to describe how humans could be. There was no Administrator here that could remove thieves from society. Some humans were honest and some weren't; it was a choice.

"It has value?" Master Bane asked taking the stack from me and examining it.

This looked like nothing to them and they didn't understand how it was important. In my memories they saw what I could do with this. Much like the stones, money here was a representation of wealth with no real value in itself.

It gave the men a new appreciation of the stones they used. Christof sat on the end of my bed as he considered the matter.

"This is where you slept?" he asked passing his hand over the rough faded comforter.

"Yes."

"It isn't comfortable," he said and moved around making the old springs squeak, "and it is very noisy."

I shrugged. It wasn't that bad if I didn't toss around at night.

"Where did you get the money?" Kein asked as he walked around the room.

I explained the concept of a paycheck to them. Mr. Pensky paid me less because I lived here. The money in the toilet tank was whatever I didn't spend on bus fare, food, and clothes."

The men followed me back outside to look at the dingy swimming pool on the property.

"I see why you liked the place you took us first," Damien said looking into the still, murky water.

"This place is unpleasant," Christof said looking around. "You felt fear here constantly. There was no pleasure in your life."

Evan hugged me from behind, pulling my back flush to his front. "We gave you better than this. Come back with us," he stated.

I melted into Evan and left willingly. They took me to the mountains, to the untouched beauty of Pateria. With them, in this world, I felt peace.

It was all good and relaxed. No more nightmares plagued the dreams the rest of the night. We were together and we were happy.

"Wake up, slave," my fake Master said loudly.

Groggily, I remembered hearing him yelling at me. I'd been in such a wonderful, peaceful sleep. It took me longer to wake than usual.

The men commented on my slow progress and pulled me to the table to eat. They fed me all they usually did, but what I really wanted was some of those worms.

"Why don't I ever have worms, Masters?" I asked.

The men stared at me with fury on their faces.

"They are expensive, slave. We do not see the need for you to have them. You will sleep in the box again tonight for your impudence," one of the men growled.

I stayed silent and looked at the floor. Before last night, I was sure I hated the worms, now I was asking for them. It didn't make any sense.

The Keepers was like it always was, we played inside in the morning. Strange catches of feelings assaulted me throughout the day. Boredom while I played the drums, for instance, and that didn't make any sense.

I concentrated on the weird sensation and looked at Fuji. She shouldn't eat the worms and she was obsessed with her skin. These were things I already knew and learning more about this slave did not interest me.

"Ciara," Rose called in a singing voice, "what are you doing?"

"Thinking," I answered trying to act normally.

"Can you play and think at the same time?" she laughed.

"Of course," I blushed and started to beat out their favorite rhythm again.

In the afternoon we went to the beach. There were several games being played but I wasn't taking part. Even after having spent the night dreaming of swimming, I still wanted to go into the water. Perhaps next time my owners had me, we could go somewhere swimming.

I remembered a place then, a place I'd never been to and never seen. It looked like a lake, surrounded on every side by tall mountains. Water from the mountains washed into the body of water from a several streams. Master Damien and his Brothers often stopped there to play as they left the mountains.

"CIARA," an annoyed Fuji said, grabbing the ball that had landed at my feet. "You could have just thrown it back to us. Come on, we need another person for this game to work."

I apologized and walked over to join my friends. My mind was all over the place today. Hopefully I wasn't having some sort of a mental breakdown.

As I cleaned the apartment that night, I thought about all the strange feelings and strange dreams. They were consuming and came out of no where. It was almost impossible to think or do anything with them plaguing me.

I panicked a slight bit as I considered the issue further. One of my cousins on Earth had schizophrenia, at least Mom had told me she had it. The girl thought aliens were invading and wore a classic tinfoil hat most of the time. Even with the best of medications she was not able to think clearly.

It made me smile sadly now. Poor girl, she really wasn't wrong.

Perhaps it was the box, I thought. Maybe all those days with the calming creams stuck in the box had driven me mad. Strange it would just pop up suddenly, so many day cycles later.

My rag touched a clear jar of liquid on the table and I caught it just before it fell over.

"Slave," one of the men barked, "pay attention to what you are doing. You almost knocked over one of our experiments. You spend another night in the box."

Dropping my head submissively, I apologized to the man.

He was right, I was not being cautious. I shuddered to think how many days in the box I would get for ruining their work.

Later that night, tired from cleaning, I crawled into what was becoming my permanent bed. It slid shut and I shuddered at the quiet darkness. The only thing I could hear was my breathing. All I saw was black. Perhaps I would fall asleep soon and not be subjected to the desolation of this punishment.

The dreams came again that night. This time I dreamed I was on Earth scrubbing my mother's house. My uncles walked around dropping food and other things on the carpet, watching me clean it up. It was an annoying repetitive dream, just like it had been when I had lived it.

Suddenly, the dream changed slightly. Master Damien and his Brothers were watching me work. It was embarrassing they should see what slovenly piles of crap my family was.

I couldn't seem to stop cleaning, even with my owners standing and looking around. I swept, mopped, and scrubbed, but things never got cleaner. Dirt and grime appeared out of thin air or my uncles made another mess.

My uncles had destroyed the house for the fun of watching me try to put it back together. In my dream, when my Uncle Eddy dropped a large pile of cheesy dip on the carpet for the fifth time, Master Damien struck him. Uncle Eddy flew across the room and smashed against the wall and slid down uncoscious. Suddenly the floor, the walls, and the entire house looked clean and fresh.

I sighed with relief and stood up.

Everything evaporated as I stared at Master Damien. How I had wished to do that very thing many times over, but I didn't know how to knock out a man my uncle's size. Desperately, I wanted to learn.

"It's easy," Master Damien told me. "We've been learning to fight since we were very small."

It was the strangest dream I've ever had. I watched as my young Masters learned to fight. It was like they invited me to share their memories, by morning I felt like a Warrior.

I was awake and nauseated by the time the men let me out of the box in the morning. I leapt up and ran for the bathroom. Had I spent one more moment in there I would have thrown up on myself.

That afternoon at the Keepers I crept along the dunes until I was mostly alone. The other girls that came down here did so for quiet. I wasn't making noise, so they ignored me.

It had been a strange dream, but I felt like I knew how to fight. I searched my mind and found memories from the dream. I swung and kicked the way I had seen the men do. It seemed I had the right idea, just no strength or practice with the movement.

Fuji and Rose came down and wanted to know what I was doing. As soon as I saw them I stopped, but they stayed.

"Is it a new dance, Ciara?" Fuji asked.

"No," I said trying to figure out what to call it. "I was just fooling around. My...uncles taught me to fight and I was just doing the moves they showed me."

It was a plausible lie.

"Show us," Rose encouraged settling down.

I demonstrated the moves, but I was far less adept than the figures in my dream had been. We all laughed as I struggled to get better. It was a fun and distracting way to spend the afternoon.

The men came and got me at night as usual. We went into their rooms and they stood at the threshold staring at me. Usually they went down the bathhouse now, but they didn't look like they were getting ready to go.

"When will it come?" one of them asked me.

"I don't understand, Master. When will what come?"

"The menstruation," he pronounced carefully. "It has been seventy day cycles since the last one. We are being patient. You told us this was a regular cycle. They should be even."

A terrible thought came to me then. The sickness every morning was not illness.

"Yes, it should," I said raising my hands and taking a step back. I was sure they should not know. "It's not something I control. My body does it when the hormones-"

"What is that word?" the long haired man interrupted me.

I tried desperately to explain, but this was one of those times. They locked me in the box that night for not being honest. To me, it seemed they just preferred to sleep without me. For once I was glad to be alone and panic on my own.

My period was late. The men didn't know what that meant, but I did. A late period meant something very different from what they feared.

My mother had suffered morning sickness with me. She'd lost weight and had to be placed on supplements. Even my grandmother had suffered the damned sickness with every one of her many children. This seemed so much like what they described.

It couldn't be, I assuaged myself. Master Damien had said this could not happen. He and his Brothers had been so sure, but the truth was hard to refute.

I had menstruated, which was odd. That must mean I was fertile again. The morning sickness was hard to contest, even if I wanted to. Very little else could cause the daily illness that went away on its own. It was all adding up to a point I tried desperately to avoid.

The men were wrong. My hands felt my lower stomach as though the nonexistent bulge would suddenly begin to form. I was carrying a child.

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To all the stinkers out there who figured out my plot twist: good job! I'll keep working to surprise you if you'll keep reading. DW